Notes from the field

1 SharePoint Saturday Charlotte

Notes from the fieldExperience Migrating to 0ffice 365


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Dean Gross-MCITP, SharePoint Cardinal Solutions

SharePoint and O365 Consultant 20+ years industry experience; 10+ SharePoint

My blog: http://dlgross.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @Dean144

Who am I?


Carolinas Healthcare System journey to SharePoint Online, so far: What you won’t know until you dig in and implement it

Company and System Overview Unexpected behaviors and recommendations Undocumented limits

Agenda


Upgraded from WSS 3.0 to SP2010 in 2012

Office 365

Carolinas HealthCare System

500site

collections

7000sub sites

600GB

20%annual growth

38KE3 users

70SP Online

sites


Updates at the speed of the internet – taking advantage of new functionality at a quicker pace.

What business is CHS in? Data centers or patient care? Which is the better value add from the SharePoint team?

A) Keeping a set of servers patched and running B) Solving business problems and increasing efficiencies

Why is CHS migrating?


Microsoft’s goal is to update Office 365 constantly, at “the speed of the internet”

Your organization will need to move at this same speed. They aren’t kidding.

Updates at the “Speed of the Internet”


Office 365 Admin Center Dashboard View Details and history

Service health (1) – RSS feed available Planned maintenance (2) – no RSS feed

Six day notice given for a planned multi-hour outage Message center (3) – no RSS feed

New roadmap now available Thin on details and few if any dates published Incomplete

Update notifications

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/office-365-roadmap-FX104343353.aspx


Problems and Challenges

Unexpected behaviors and recommendations


Single Sign On IE security zones configured via AD Group Policy ADFS set up to allow CHS accounts to login Must enter email address on the “realm discovery” page

Logging In


What if you want to log in as another account? Recommendation

With IE – In Private Browsing or another browser (Chrome, etc.)

Logging In (cont.)


Logging In (Cont’d)


Users that don’t have a license in your tenant

Licensing Microsoft defines who can and

cannot be covered by external license On site contractors require full license Off site contractors can use external

license

Options Disable Enable authenticated external

users Enable anonymous guest links

Options can be set Each site collection All OneDrive sites

External sharing


Process Site owner sends an invitation to access a document to an email address

([email protected]) John Doe receives the email and clicks the link

External sharing – Authenticated

mailto:[email protected]


Process.. John Doe creates a new Microsoft account (

[email protected]) [email protected] now has access to a document that the

site owner intended for [email protected]. Recommendation

Training and governance practices currently the only option Ask partners to use business email accounts

Site owner should review accounts info for discrepancies Tenant Admin Should Review External Sharing info

50 user limit – bug, Fixed by End of September 2014

External sharing – Authenticated cont.





Account from Another tenant Helpful ?

People Picker- External User

Recommendation• Don’t use accounts from Test/Trial

Tenant


Who should I Pick?Customized View with Account Field Added

People Picker -User with 2 AD Accounts

Recommendation• Filter accounts to limit users with multiple AD accounts to one UPN


Allows users to synch files to a local device Prominently advertised above every library Security concerns – files can be synchronized to devices not managed

by IT Files remain on the device after the user’s account is disabled No technical way to require files are only synchronized to an

encrypted location Microsoft is increasing OneDrive storage to 1TB per user

File synchronization


How to disable file synch? No option in Office 365 Admin center. Option per site/sub site, from MSDN: Option per library

Enabled by default on every list and library NO API AVAILABLE (PowerShell, CSOM, REST) Users with full control permission can re-enable

CHS solution CHS developing console app to loop through and disable App mimics web browser/user to “click” the button

File synchronization (cont.)Setting this property to true does not disable synchronization. Instead, it represents a recommendation to the client not to attempt synchronization.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.spweb.excludefromofflineclient.aspx


Broken for CHS When created, the domain is one of our sub domains Email doesn’t route to it

If you have multiple domains with O365, you cannot select which domain is used for site mailbox addresses

You cannot disable the site mailbox “app” Recommendation

Educate Site Owners Update each mailbox via PowerShell, after it’s created by users

Site Mailboxes


SharePoint Administrators must be Global Admins Exchange Administrators must be Global Admins

Recommendation Administrative Policies/Procedures Wait for workload specific roles

Global Administrators


Microsoft does not offer “test” tenants with subscription Limited testing can occur using test site collections Possible solution, trial tenants?

Limited to 30 days, can ask for extension May not be the same build number as your production tenant Tied to an individual, not to an organization

Recommendation Use dedicated site collections in existing tenant

Test Environments


Adding an app to the app catalog makes it available to be added to all site collections

Adding an app from the app store made it available to all site collections

How to test apps before deploying? Will these apps become the new Fab40? Recommendations

In SP admin center, set App Purchases setting to No Use a dedicated Site Collection for testing, invite requestor to

help test Provide a list of external apps to support personnel

App Governance


New feature

Custom Themes


No Administrative Controls Users can change their own them

Menu can be different depending where you are in the suite. Here are in the order

the Outlook WA version, the calendar version, the People version, the OneDrive version, the site (and My Site) version and the Delve version the Power BI version (from another tenant)

Custom Themes (Cont’d)


3 examples Menu differs Outlook WA Calendar People OneDrive Site (and My Site) and Delve Power BI

Custom Theme (Cont’d)


SP Team Site Outlook Web App



Issues Multiple Standards Outlook/Calendar/People/Tasks pages have a

different theme than OneDrive/Sites/Delve/Power Bi (and SharePoint sites have also their own theme, and Yammer as well ! ). So we have in fact four themes One for Outlook/calendar/people/ Tasks/ PowerBI/ Delve One for OneDrive/Sites page/ Admin pages / My site One for Yammer One (or several depending on themes) for SharePoint

Online site



Advice you won’t heed either


Microsoft supports IE current version, minus 1 Firefox current version, minus 1 Chrome current version

IE 8 support ended in April IE8 didn’t break, immediately MS announced IE8 will only be able to use “lite version” of Outlook Web

Access by end of June Death by a thousand paper cuts – IE8 will break piece by piece

Office 2010 and 2013

Client Software Updates


Plan to update your client computers Plan to keep them up to date This includes browser and Office Office is patched monthly, try to keep up

Recommendations


Microsoft will notify customers about upcoming “disruptive changes” Microsoft defines whether a change is disruptive

Disruptive Changes


Suite bar update deployed without notice Suite bar stopped rendering for certain browsers Text color changed – which broke one Out theme

Could have broken our branding, if we have chosen that color for the background

Recommendation Learn about MS styling techniques Keep branding to an absolute minimum

Disruptive change?


Microsoft rolled out UI enhancements to OneDrive and SPO Starting in April, our users started seeing this above document

libraries: This update was rolled out per user We confirmed this via a Microsoft support ticket, when noticed a different

experience than what they saw on others screens.

Recommendation Educate Support Personnel

Updates applied to users not tenant


To render in the browser file must be 25MB or smaller This is not documented – we confirmed via support ticket. Recommendation

Use new file format, which results in smaller files.

Visio Web drawing limits


Documented limit: 2GB max size – document library

Undocumented limit: 250MB limit on file attachments 27 minute time limit

This took two months to confirm via a support ticket. Recommendation

Avoid attachments – especially Large files Use High Speed connection when uploading very large files

File upload limits


Uploading 127MB file failed until updated OneDrive site provisioning failed Workflow errors Recommendation

Strange behavior – Increase Resources

Resources allocation


Any questions? My blog: http://dlgross.wordpress.com Twitter: @Dean144

Thank you.


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